


Missing Persons Report

by calliecaddie



Series: A Crumbling Universe [1]
Category: Jessica Jones (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:21:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23683825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calliecaddie/pseuds/calliecaddie
Summary: As Manhattan reels from a sudden mass disappearance of people, superpowered private eye Jessica Jones tries to cope within a city that's half dead. As information on missing people continues to pile up on her desk, an old friend tries to convince her to do something amidst this crisis.
Series: A Crumbling Universe [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1705459
Comments: 10
Kudos: 7





	Missing Persons Report

_Being stuck with the “hero” label tends to confuse everyone. I can stop a car with my bare hands, fall ten stories and walk it off, and my liver can heal from a night of bourbon faster than anyone else’s. A short, sweet list of why folks keep coming to me for help with cheating spouses._

_The confusion comes from normal people thinking I can do anything. That these so-called gifts of mine mean that I can put the world back together when it starts to fall apart. But I’m just an overqualified private investigator working out of her crappy apartment. Hell, when it comes down to it… I’m just a person like all the rest._

_And right now, I could use an actual hero to find out where the hell New York went._

Even for a talented alcoholic like Jessica Jones, she’d drank too much the night before to handle her phone’s incessant ringing and vibrating. She dug herself out from under her blankets, eyes glazed red by a hangover. Much like the day before, the city outside remained unnervingly quiet and still as a corpse. 

“Goddammit,” she muttered in defeat. The horror dawned on her that yesterday had actually happened.

Even through her headache, she couldn’t shake any of the chilling memories in her head. Brianna came into her office, skin pale and eyes wide. She was more confused than anything else, as if she were still processing whatever it was she saw. She could hardly form full sentences as Jessica tried asking her what happened, but all she could make out was Malcolm’s name out of her lips. But before she could properly explain, she dissolved into nothing. 

Without thinking, Jessica turned to her office assistant, Gillian, to call 911 as if the police could do something about the confusing thing they’d just witnessed. But then she disappeared too. It didn’t take her long to realize that the same thing happened to Malcolm. 

Trying to mask her panic from no one, her mind went to her neighbors, Oscar and Vido Arocho. The father and son that she’d grown close to would’ve been eating together in their apartment by then. She knocked twice on their door and kicked it in when she got anxious and impatient. Her breath became short when she saw two unfinished meals on their dining table, Vido’s precious Captain America figure on the ground nearby. Exactly where it wouldn’t be if Vido were around to take care of it.

She’d made a patrol around her neighborhood, though it mainly consisted of her taking a brisk and nervous walk while listening to the people around her. Sure enough, they were seeing the same terrible thing she had. Most everyone was clamoring about losing someone, cursing their phones for not connecting their calls and yelling out someone’s name. She even saw other people fading into dust. There were unnatural disappearances all over the city, and she had no idea what was causing them. It wasn’t every day that she regretted not leaving the country after her last ordeal, but now it was all she thought about doing.

When the phone service returned, her device hadn’t stopped ringing. Her inbox was packed to near full with emails about missing people and her voicemail was slowly filling with calls about the same. She thought about getting to the bottom of it, answering the first five-or-so calls and trying to tell panicky clientele that she was “figuring it out.” But she settled on finding the first dive she could find with someone still tending bar and trying to beat reality by drowning it in whiskey.

Against her better judgement, Jessica grabbed her phone from her nightstand and swiped it open. Sure enough, there were several dozen unread emails. She didn’t bother emptying her voicemail either before she dropped her phone beside her. She drilled divots into her temples, still trying to make sense of this mass disappearance. But all of her detective skills couldn’t piece together a city’s population vanishing into thin air.

_What do they expect from me? To follow clues? To fly around in a cape and rescue everyone? To be honest, I would if I could. But this isn’t another case to solve. It’s a goddamn nightmare._

The pounding at her door startled her, but she quickly became annoyed. The last thing Jessica wanted to deal with was another person crying over a missing someone face to face. She dragged herself up from bed and plodded across her apartment toward her liquor shelf. 

“Closed until further notice,” she yelled, pouring herself a glass of bourbon for breakfast.

There was a pregnant pause before more pounding. Jessica scoffed as she took a sip.

“Look, asshole. You’re not the only one trying to track someone down, you’re just the only one annoying enough to visit the office about it.”

Still, there was pounding. Jessica dropped her drink on her desk and stormed toward the door. She grasped the knob tightly enough to nearly crush it as she swung it open. She was nearly ready to hit someone. 

“You have five seconds to--”

Jessica stared agape. Trish Walker stood in her doorway, her prison jumpsuit soaked and her hair dried stiff and frayed. They were both speechless for some time, Jessica trying to put her feelings in some coherent order.

Trish spoke with a shaky voice when Jess couldn’t. “I-I-I know I shouldn’t be here… and I’m so sorry, but all this started happening… and I just had to make sure you were oka--”

Jessica cut her off with a hug, tears trickling from her eyes. Trish didn’t know what to do at first, fully expecting her reception to be anything but warm. She’d spent months in the Raft wondering what she’d do or say if she ever saw Jessica again. But her own tears came too as she wrapped her arms around her sister for the first time in far too long. And she still didn’t know what to say to her.

***

_Sometimes, being a loner doesn’t necessarily mean you’re all alone. In my experience, people will always be around to annoy you while you’re doing your job. I only spent a day being truly alone… having absolutely no one. And it’s almost too much to bear._

_I could’ve used anyone by this point. Even her._

Jessica brought a warm cup of tea to a blanket-wrapped Trish, having just freshened up in her shower and dressed in Jess’ clothes. 

Trish swallowed her drink and mustered up enough courage to ask, “Anyone we know get hit?”

“Malcolm and my assistant,” Jessica replied dryly, her own drink back in hand. “Plus Erik hasn’t returned any of my calls, or Costa for that matter. Hell, I even tried calling Hogarth. No responses yet, so… one can only assume.”

Trish took another sip. “Does anyone have... any idea what happened?”

Jessica sat beside her on her garishly orange couch, though she settled some distance away. She replied in an offhanded voice. “So far, people seem to think it has something to do with the spaceship that paid the city a visit the other day.”

“Jesus… More aliens, huh?”

Jessica shrugged. “Aside from all the people who went poof, the outside world hasn’t changed much.”

“Clearly,” Trish chuckled wryly as she took another sip. 

As Jessica stared across what seemed like miles at Trish on the other end of the couch, she felt a pang of guilt for wanting her sister back. She felt even more guilty that Trish wasn’t still in prison. “What are you doing here, Trish? How’d you even get out of the Raft?”

Trish swallowed her drink. “It’s easy when most of the guards and inmates suddenly go missing. Security went down and they started breaking out.”

Jessica flung a tuft of hair out of her face and gave Trish a woeful glare. “I guess anyone would want to escape prison if they could.”

Trish snapped back with her own stare. “For what it’s worth, I wanted to stay in my cell. But the other prisoners started rioting and dragged me out… if they weren’t escaping, they were wreaking havoc. I wouldn’t have survived there, so I fought my way out and swam for hours back to Manhattan.” 

Jessica’s eyes softened. Part of her wanted to be hard on Trish, but the grim, silent chaos outside her window threw everything off. Everything that was supposed to make sense didn’t, and the crimes Trish committed seemed to be getting smaller in the grand scheme of things. She knew that Trish wanted to serve her sentence honorably, and neither of them expected an entire population being erased to get in the way of that. For the first time in a while, she felt at ease letting her off the hook. “Did anyone follow you here? Security, cops?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. But I think they have bigger fish to fry than…” Trish paused for a moment, remembering herself. “...a convicted murderer.”

“Now that’s saying something,” Jessica said with her usual venomous sarcasm.

A ping on her phone made Jessica look away for a moment. She walked to her desk and stared at a news notification. She returned to the couch and started to fumble through the cushions.

“What are you looking for?” Trish asked.

“Remote,” she said having just pulled it out from under the couch. “TV reception is coming back up, and someone’s giving a worldwide broadcast.”

“Who?”

As if to answer, Jessica turned her television on and changed to the first news channel she could think of. A large, muscular man dressed in a regular suit stood at a podium surrounded by news microphones and only a handful of journalists. Jessica and Trish stared intensely at him as he began to speak, hoping to will an explanation out of one of Earth’s mightiest heroes.

“My name is Captain Steve Rogers,” he said, formally yet grimly into the microphones. “The Avengers and I are… aware of the events that many of you watching have likely witnessed within these past couple of days. People… loved ones disappearing. We realize that you’re all confused and scared. As such, we’re cooperating with the American government and thought it best to… keep the public informed. Though this may not be easy to hear or understand… it’s important that you know.”

Jessica and Trish looked uneasily at each other, wondering what would make one of the most hardened and experienced heroes in the world as mournful as he seemed.

“There was an attack on our planet yesterday, carried out by an alien being named Thanos.”

***

_I have begrudgingly accepted the fact that I am a hero, no matter how much I tried not to be. But there are stronger... better heroes out there, and they’re live on camera trembling over some shithead monster from the stars. And right now, those better heroes are telling the rest of us down here that they did everything they could to stop it. And they still failed._

_So what does that say about me? What does that really make me?_

Jessica sat at her desk pouring herself another glass, not even looking at the screen anymore as Steve Rogers’ speech came to an end.

“We ask that you cooperate with your local authorities to help keep track of whoever’s left so we maintain as accurate a census as possible on both the remaining population and potential victims. I’ll take a few questions starting now.”

As journalists began clamoring and snapping photos, Trish shut off the television. She tossed the remote back on the couch and stood in front of Jessica’s desk, a sternly-judgemental look on her face.

Jessica caught her glare and shrugged rudely. “What?”

“What can we do?” Trish asked.

“My thoughts exactly,” Jessica said, drowning her sarcasm in the rest of her drink. 

“You can’t be serious.” Trish rolled her eyes.

“Look, you heard the same thing I did, okay? As far as I’m concerned, you and I won the goddamn lottery.” 

“I am tired of having this conversation with you, Jess.”

“Then don’t. You’re hardly in a position to lecture me on how to be a hero.” 

“But you and I can do something about this. Not just as ‘powered individuals,’ but as the ones who are left in this half-empty world!”

“You think I don’t want to do something?” Jessica spat back. “This isn’t me trying to forget who I am or what I can do. I’m just trying to be real about this.”

“This isn’t exactly a normal situation, Jess!”

“I know that, Trish! But we’re not just gonna blast off into space on a rocket and beat the shit out of an alien until he somehow undoes whatever the hell he did!”

“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about these cases.” Trish slammed Jessica’s phone on her desk. “I saw all these messages on your phone.”

“That’s an invasion of my clients’ privacy,” Jessica snarked.

“I wouldn’t exactly call them clients if you haven’t gotten back to a single one.” Trish leaned forward, propping herself on the desk surface. “Finding people is what you do, and I can help. At least some of these missing people have to be cases we can pursue.”

Jessica looked angrily back at Trish and said morosely, “They got erased by ET. Case closed.”

“We don’t know that.” Trish continued through Jessica’s scoff, speaking a little more calmly now. “Jess, I’m trying to be real here too. On my way here, I saw people wandering around the city. Tourists. Kids. Either someone is looking for them or they have nowhere to go, but we can narrow it down. We can get them somewhere safe or… help out with the census!”

Jessica pursed her lips, nodding her head reluctantly. Even after jail time, Trish could still become Jessica’s voice of reason when she needed it. And for once, she knew herself when she had to listen. Nostalgia struck her as she recalled a time when she was a little more obstinate than she was now. She looked back to Trish and said “I let maybe a hundred of these pile up,” as if to deter her.

Trish shrugged. “I’ve got nothing better to do.”

Jessica leaned back in her chair. “You know, some of this ‘census work’ might include putting escaped convicts back behind bars.” Her gaze remained fixed on Trish, as if keeping her in sight would stop her from being taken away again. 

She barely had to wait for Trish’s response, which rang with resolution. “Then I’ll go back. No questions asked. But until then, we can do this together. I know you want to, Jess. Please.”

Jessica looked deeply into Trish’s eyes. She looked stalwart, brave, even though she had more to lose out of the two of them. Once upon a time, she hated that look. Now, she was almost jealous of it. She grasped her half-full glass of bourbon and downed the rest of it in as few gulps as possible.

“Jess--” Trish began, though she got cut off by the glass striking the desk.

“Gimme a break,” Jess asked. “It’s gonna be my last drink for a while.”

Trish let a sigh of relief escape through her nose. She crossed her arms and asked Jessica “Where do we start?”

_Heroism has always been taught to me. Chiseled into my skull by people who knew better. It’s only recently that I realized how much of my career I’ve spent trying to live up to that._

_I guess that’s what I’ll be doing for a while._


End file.
